Category Archive: Google Stuff
Subcategories: No categories
Is Google losing the plot?
So there is no denying the fact that Google is the most significant technology company to come along in recent years and I think most of us have walked a long road right from the beginning with ol’ Larry and Sergey, I for one converted way back in late 1999 when the Beta Engine really started hitting the press back then (they stole me away from Yahoo).
Now well over six years on, where do I stand with my relationship with the big “G”? Google has since started to branch of into all sorts of directions with some products that where groundbreaking and innovative on much the same level as The Search. We had GMail (awesome I use it everyday), Google Earth (a whole industry has been built on it) and the rest, well there are many, but none really as groundbreaking or revolutionary as the first three I mentioned. Picasa, GChat GTalk, GDesktop, GCalender, GNotebook anyone?
Yeah sure, there have been some great free products out there and there ain’t nothing wrong with free, but I have always seen Google as the ultimate innovator, the company that is developing the product suite that will blow the cobwebs of “ye old crappy corporate failures at software” and that will blow new life into parts of my digital experience that I never even realised needed revival.
Stop! Oh dear! Have a look at the products that they have just announced this week:
1) Albums in Picasa
2) Google Spreadsheet
3) Some wierd thing that will sample what I watch on TV?
If we stay still enough, we may just hear the sound of the GTrain sliding of the rail.. *bang* *crash*
Mark Forrester points out: “What gets me though is why are they diluting their brand?”
Om Malik asks: “Is Google Wasting Its Genius Cycles?”
Good point you two, Google might have to start holding back on these little experiments and start focusing there minds and money on producing the next big thing since GMail. I doubt they are causing any M$ Office managers any form of headache by releasing this product, this is not how you disrupt..
What about the small factor of people losing faith in your products, a sort of I couldn’t be bothered attitude. I mean we are all expecting great things now from you Google, that IS your brand. Or are you feeling the pains of a company that grew huge way too quickly?
Apart from the duh factor (come on people, have you never seen a spreadsheet?) there are some very serious privacy issues still in the way before most large corporations will even start looking at only office suites and right now there are some very good cross-platform alternatives out there for the desktop, OpenOffice being one of them.
As for that weak excuse for an upgrade to Picasa, when are we seeing web integration into Google’s own exciting FlickR killer? Now that would capture my attention!
Just about the only glimmer of hope I see from all of these little “Goodies” is that Google is proving some form of viability of the-web-as-a-platform, but I think they have a ways to go still to resolve the trust issues.
Holding my breath for the next announcement.
Be sure to read Mike Arringtons similar rant here …
Update: Over on digitalfarm JBagley comments that we are not seeing the big picture and that “All I’m saying is don’t always take things at face-value”, and that in the end it is about money. I agree there is something lurking in the muddy waters at Google HQ, but if I was the evil genius trying to take over the world, I would try to make sure that people are hooked and not release ho-hum pieces of software that are quickly sending the subsequent releases to “so what?” hell. I think they are heading towards a mismanagement disaster no matter what the intention is.
Technorati Tags: Google, Google+Spreadsheet
Google AdSense API
Google have opened up an AdSense API for developers.
To qualify for the beta you need to host content for registered users. Examples: Blogs hosts, wiki’s, forums etc. A minimum of 100000 page views per day is a further requirement.
From the AdSense blog:
By making it easy for publishers to sign up for AdSense and generate revenue, the API offers another compelling reason for publishers to choose your service over a competitor’s–and remain loyal to you. The AdSense API is great for publishers who don’t want the hassle of setting up their own accounts or dealing with cutting and pasting HTML snippets.
Looks like pretty good revenue opportunities when your publishers have a good couple months.
"Google Notebook" – ness
There seems to be a fair amount of buzz surrounding the imminent release of Google Notebook, yet another arrow in Google’s ever increasing quiver of products. No one is really 100% sure of what the full capabilities will be when it launches next week, but you can get a pretty good idea by browsing the screenshots posted by Erica Joy on her Flickr account.
Notebook seems to be somewhere between a competitor for the well known del.icio.us service and knowledge page type services like JetPack and Squidoo (without the cash). It has a rich AJAX API, allowing you to handily “add a note” or bookmark to your notebook page of choice (you can have many in different categories) straight from your Google search results and it has a handy back-end for organising all of your goodies and dealing with tasks like maintaining pages and categories, ordering notes (using a nifty AJAX drag-and-drop) etc.
You have the option of keeping a notebook private or sharing it in which case it is searchable by users of the engine.
Significantly this is yet another movement by Google into the world of Web 2.0 (let’s stick with this metaphor for now, shall we?), and it clearly underlines there interest in user supported services beyond Blogger.
Can we see a free version of FlickR soon?
On a more sinister note, do you see the picture evolving now as Google starts to bring users of other popular services into their own silo? There are elements of worry here, vendor lock-in being the main one, do we trust “Do no evil?”. I always find comfort in the fact that while Google is huge, you will always have alternatives and that while their services are great they are often not the best-of-breed (remember Blogger?), and that there will always be viable competitors in the space. For now..
Technorati Tags: Google Notebook, Web, 2.0
Beware the Google Pages spam trap
Beware, Google Page Creator is a spam harvesters dream. Your little website is link to your account and can be accessed via “youremailaddress.googlepages.com”. A quick Google search on the domain using site:googlepages.com already revealed 516 unique sub-domains.
From there on out it is easy to write a screen scraper to harvest the URL’s, replace the googlepages.com bit with @gmail.com and bam, your off to the races.
So consider this your Google Pages Top Tip: Register your site under a sub-domain or risk dealing with even more spam.
Technorati Tags: Google, Google Pages, Spam
Google Base, now with a payment option.
Serves me right, I go slagging off on google base yesterday.
Now they announce a payment system to be integrated via your account to be used for buying and selling.
Technorati Tags: Google Base
Extra! Extra! Get your google page now!!
In a further continuance of google’s gigantic game of battleship, it has fired off another shell at a square it hasn’t bombed before, this time in the form of a website builder and hosting service called Google Page Creator. (Also see the ‘Spray-and-Pray’ theory)
Basically its is one of those easy to use WYSIWYG numbers, you can create and edit your site and then get a page at yourgmailusername.googlepages.com. So nothing new there, just about every major ISP and search engine has been doing this for years, remember how tripod made tons of money for themselves in the early years of Web 1.0?
I would love to comment on how great the tool is, however it seems like google has somehow underestimated the fact that every single geek on the planet would to want to squeeze through the turnstiles, and they have had to halt new registrations due to load concerns. *Sigh* , they can handle a billion zillion search requests, but they couldn’t figure this out? Oh well, I guess they only need to do whats necessary to get me blogging, and here you go.. Still wonder which company is the biggest Attention wick out there at the moment?
Anyhoo, I think this will only really remain buzzworthy and then die off pretty quickly, remember googlebase or should I say google-some-porn-base? if not, then I’m wrong and then they will probably sit with a Myspace killer on their hands, less the obvious social networking goodies.
Oh well, Scoble says we should be praising google for trying to bring a web presence to the masses, I kinda think if they REALLY want to do that they need to come up with a brand new radical idea and not just some old model rehash with some cool new flashy Ajax toys (Sounds like the Apple effect, doesn’t it. Ooohh its got a half eaten fruit on it , how revolutionary). What the heck, if this is really a “20% project” (Google encourage their developers to spend one day a week working on these little side-projects) , then its probably cool and worth a look, maybe it will catch on, hey? Now get back to what really matters! Google Search!
Technorati Tags: google, google pagesgoogle page creator
My first sighting of Gmail GTalk in the wild.
Seems like they are slowly rolling out gtalk to gmail users, my sister had hers activated this morning it seems quite cool. Ajax implementation running in a little popover div on the right hand bottom of the screen with the option to detach to a popup. A test has revealed that you cannot just run the chat client without the main gmail window, what a shame.
Here is a link to see what I’m talking about.
Update: The geekspin email account has also just been updated! Drop me an email and I will invite you for a chat.